$10.00

Book: Moa sightings volume 3 (print version)[978047315358]

Moa Sightings, a book in three volumes, gives an account of moa sighting claims in New Zealand. Each volume is hardback, in colour, with 448 pages, page size 240 X 170 mm, thickness 35 mm, and has a jacket and case wrap. Weight per volume 1.38 kg.
Comment from the forward by Denis Dutton, Professor of Philosophy, University of Canterbury, New Zealand: “This invaluable book … provides a broad and systematic historical backdrop for individual claims to have sighted living moa. However misguided or illusory moa-sighting claims may be, Bruce Spittle has done an authentic service to scholarship.”
The back cover blurb also notes: “Hunting pressure, habitat destruction, and introduced predators led to moa extinction by A.D. 1650 according to the previously held serial overkill model. In the currently accepted rapid “blitzkrieg” model, all the moas were gone by A.D. 1450, over 300 years before the first Europeans landed with Captain Cook in 1769. However a number of moa sighting claims have been made since 1769 and the author offers for consideration a staggered survival model in which moas lingered on until a later date in some remote, isolated areas. The available circumstantial evidence for a few moas remaining after 1769 is presented including reports suggesting survival in circa 1810 by Kawana Paipai, 1845 by Burr Osburn, 1863 by Patrick Caples, circa 1825–1875 by HJ Cuttance, and 1878 by Sir George Grey.
The author, Bruce Spittle, is of part-Maori descent and lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.
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